Edition 46: Official websites; one year later
About a year ago I wrote about how pitiful a lot of the official websites for the people linked on starletlinks.com are. So I took a look at the sites a year later and also looked at other ones; there is good news and bad news.
Lets start with the bad examples of last year, it’s always best to start with the bad news. LLrocks.com, Lindsay Lohan’s official site still hasn’t received a single update. A last update on the 27th February 2005 was bad enough last year now it’s even worse, I can’t even imagine how little they care about her web presence. Yes of course she has more important things to take care off, she has to try and rebuild her career but a good web presence could be a sign to people that she really is serious about it. Though the Lohan family doesn’t take the internet serious anyway, they’re trying to launch Aliana Lohan’s career but her site is probably even worse than Lindsay’s, no information there whatsoever.
Another site that hasn’t received a single update in the past year is Abigail Breslin’s site. Just like last year it still mentions that she’s nominated for an Academy Award, this time last year we already know she didn’t win it. Looking at the website of Sofia Vassilieva who’s now Abigails co-star in My Sister’s Keeper it’s even worse. Not a single update in about seven years on a website for a girl that’s just fifteen. So her site hasn’t been updated for pretty much half her life, not the mention the very old school internet background music on the site. They don’t have to be active on the internet themselves, that might cause more trouble than it’s worth. But they should remember that they have a fanbase that does go online, they care and don’t like things like this. A good web presence shows that a celebrity cares about their fans, of course it doesn’t mean that Sofa and Abigail don’t but it’s not that big an effort.
To illustrate that I can give the example of the official websites for Kay and Danielle Panabaker. Both their sites are basically the same, a very simple design, they just have different graphics. The core design is identical, they’re sisters so why not let someone design two sites in one go. The sites aren’t overflowing with information, news or pictures but they are up to date. At least it shows that they are aware of their web presence, they’re both in college and have acting careers on the side so I can understand that they don’t waste too much time on updating a website.
The Disney people like Ashley Tisdale and Miley Cyrus still have their things in order as well. Not really sites that are overflowing with things but they’re up to date. Though in Miley’s case there of course is also Mileyworld.com where you have to pay to join (I haven’t been able to see it for myself but people that have joined seem to like the regular updates in videos and pictures, just forgetting the whole concert ticket deal for now). That site receives daily updates but Mileyworld also have a staff of people taking care of that. I’m not going to discuss all other pages again though, most of them pretty much stayed the same, some received regular updates and others less regular.
But we should also come to the positive news at some point. Emma Watson finally launched an official website last year; though she might have had one before but if she did it wasn’t noticeable. Her new site is a sleek flash design but unlike a lot of flash sites it also contains a lot of information. There is a sort of diary on there but it really doesn’t add a lot, Emma doesn’t really posts that often and if she does the messages are quite short. But the news section on the site is more up to date than any other official website linked on starletlinks.com.
Sadly Emma’s website is the only real positive change that is to be found, for the rest the sites either didn’t really change that much and just received some updates. That besides the large number of sites that didn’t receive any updates at all. Especially the lack of updates on diaries is annoying, having a diary section suggests that at some point that celebrity was planning on keeping the site up to date but at some point just lost interest or got too busy. In that case they should just shut down that section of the website, just leave static content. It’s better to give the impression of an up to date website than a website that looks like it has been left all alone on the internet and no one is taking care of it. I’m not a master web designer but I could do a better job than what has been done on some of those sites. Lets hope that there will be an improvement one year from now. I also hope that more of them will make official websites, most of them still don’t.
